· Mexican folksinger Lila Downs and Tucson band Calexico spin their Southwestern musical magic at Disney Hall.
· Comedic savant and World's Best Bush Impersonator James Adomian presents A Holiday Diversity Celebration with Dr. Maury Salomon at the UCB Theater. If you have always felt inadequate for not having attended a small, liberal arts college, an evening with Dr. Salomon should cure you of that. Permanently.
· Catch two classic Preston Sturges screwball comedies at the Egyptian, The Lady Eve and The Palm Beach Story, part of their Screwballs, Pratfalls and Catcalls: American Comedy Classics of the 1930s and 1940s series. Then when you find yourself not laughing at Fun With Dick and Jane, you'll at least understand what they were shooting for.

Lumps of coal in your stockings be damned, you tiptoed with care to send us your best guesses. But first, let us sip our hot toddies and nuzzle once more by the beckoning amber glow of One Pained n Stained Blind Vice:

Because we scour the interwebs tirelessly at this time of year to bring you as many Christmas-themed, dead-news-day stories as humanly possible, comes this AP report of Chris Rock's autobiographical sitcom Everybody Hates Chris pulling the curtain back from perhaps the most widely propagated hoax of our time:

Admittedly, after seeing Brett "Wolverstein" Ratner's 2005 holiday card featuring the beloved fauxteur dressed up as some sort of ferocious hedgehog and standing proudly front and center with his X-Men 3 cast, the feelings were bittersweet. Yes, we delighted in Halle Berry's failed attempt at keeping a straight face, to say nothing of the clever Semitification of Wolverine's name inside. But these were merely the fuzzy reiterations of a scanned greeting belonging to someone else, someone worthy. So imagine our delight when we received our very own card in the mail today! We still have no idea how it found its way past the various security clearances at Defamer HQ, but who can worry about protocol when Brett is personally thanking us for his "29 mentions in 2005!" (Truth be told, if he had added the word "hacktastic" to the search, he would have found four more.)

NY Daily News JV gossip Lloyd Grove continues his self-fashioned holiday tradition of annually banishing one oversaturated boldface attention-whore from his gossip kingdom. Last year was a well-deserving Paris Hilton, and this year, the honors go to none other than noted adopter-of-the-refugee-orphan-stars, Brad Pitt. Grove lays his crimes out methodically, but it's Pitt's Single White Female-esque behavior that we found particularly noteworthy:

· Sex and the City creator Darren Star signs a "2-for-1" pilot deal with ABC. Should his projects go to series, they should give the network a convenient place to dispose of any Housewives who get too uppity with their salary demands. [Variety]
· Ridley and Tony Scott promote David Zucker to head of TV at their Scott Free Productions following the success of CBS drama Numbers, which apparently is still on the air. Oh, excuse us: Numb3rs. [THR]
· Starting Monday, Nielsen will monitor DVR recording as part of their ratings report. Don't worry, their pilot program will measure only 60 homes to start, so you have plenty of time to erase that shameful season pass to Rodney and your "Ryan Seacrest" wishlist in a fit of paranoia. [Variety]
· Annals of stunt-casting: Christina Ricci will guest star in a "special" post-Super Bowl episode of Grey's Anatomy. Yeah, that's right, it's a slow news day. You wanna make something of it? [THR]
· Folsom Prison invites Fox to screen Walk the Line for its inmates. Joaquin Phoenix will attend, but having moved on from his Johnny Cash role, will probably decline an invitation to spend a month hanging out in the jail. [Variety]

Unibrowed studcake Josh Hartnett may find he got more than he bargained for in girlfriend Scarlett Johansson, whom he met on the set of Brian DePalma's The Black Dahlia, and who has very progressive attitudes towards fuddy-duddy notions like not sleeping around on him:

Wherein we invite our readers to set a trap of milk and cookies for humpy E! gossip-Claus Ted Casablanca, lure him down their chimney, then hold him hostage to pepper him with their best guesses as to the identity of his weekly blind item. Nary a coke-snorting It Girl or a closeted actor to be found this week, as Ted takes a turn toward the gross just in time for the holidays. Make some snow angels for One Pained 'n' Stained Blind Vice:

The critics have gone on a fishing trip with cowboy-on-cowboy three-bandanna weeper Brokeback Mountain, but we reckon there ain't much fishing going on. Its accolades have been so unanimous, the buzz around Hollywood (where Hollywood = Reuters and The Envelope) is that Brokeback has now become far and away the one to beat for Best Picture at this year's Oscars:

It's been months since Renee Zellweger filed the legal papers to erase her marriage to Kenny "We Still Have No Idea Who He Is" Chesney, one of the briefest and most pointless Hollywood unions ever conceived, but something was still bothering us. Like the barely perceptible irritation of a long-ago-squashed pea under our mattress, the phantom itch of an amputee's missing limb, or the slightest whiff of an ex-lover's perfume on a frequently washed pillowcase, the aborted connection between America's favorite scrunchy-faced darling and the semianonymous guy in the black cowboy hat somehow persisted. Then, suddenly: nothing. No waking from nightsweats from reciting poignant dialogue from A Price Above Rubies, or from the uncomfortable tumescence of a REM reenactment of that erotic, groupie-sex-in-the-break-room scene in Empire Records. Finally, with a few strokes of a judge's pen on the annulment order, we have closure.

As part of our continuing efforts to whore ourselves out, we've found a new way to make Defamer accessible on your mobile device (Palm, Blackberry, or Pocket PC). This new service downloads the latest Defamer content whenever you sync, so you can read it on the go, whether you've got a wireless signal or not. Oh, lucky you.

· The Rev. Al Sharpton renounces his potential sitcom candidacy by announcing an even worse idea: "I'm not interested in being Archie Bunker, I'm looking forward to becoming George Bush."
· An important holiday reminder: Before the airing of the grievances, you need a Festivus Pole. [via BoingBoing]
· Even Tara Reid's brother isn't having the best year.
· If you can still resist the urge to drown yourself in a jacuzzi full of Liquid Plumr while mournfully singing "I believe that children are our future" after reading this IMterview with a 15-year-old Britney Spears fan, you're probably a better person than we are.

We can't believe that we nearly let the entire day slip past before noting that Defamer's Patron Saint of Obvious Blind Item Guesses, legendary bicoastal antics-haver Andy Dick, turned 40 today. To celebrate the impressive accomplishment of surviving four decades of a lifestyle that could easily kill two coked-up 20-year-olds (or, for that matter, four 10-year-olds with drinking problems) , we share this reader-supplied anecdote that illustrates exactly why Dick is a local hero:

· The Hump Night Before Christmas One-Band Music Round-up: Eagles of Death Metal at the Troubadour.
· If you're a person of a certain age, you've seen Gremlins roughly one million times. But don't forget that the classic is actually an important holiday film and worthy of your seasonal attention once again. It's at the Aero Theater tonight with a post-screening discussion with director Joe Dante.
· Watch Conroy, Daly & Secunda face off against Gigolo Puppy in the finals of the UCB Theatre's 3 on 3 Improv Tournament, in which the audience is encouraged to shout out suggestions for the method of execution for the losing team. We hope someone goes with "toaster in a bathtub."

Yes, this latest installment in our Hollywood Holiday Cards feature is a little blurry, but no amount of rubbing your eyes will change what you're seeing: Brett Ratner, the famed fauxteur currently shooting the latest X-Men project, dressed as some kind of mini-Wolverine at the center of his cast of mutants. (Click the image for a larger version.) At first, we thought that Ratner had wastefully demanded that his wardrobe department make him his own "Wolverstein" (the name of his character as revealed on the inside of the card) costume, conjuring images of the leather-clad director nearly beheading his DP with his claws while trying to demonstrate a needlessly showy camera move. But then we noticed how bunchy the legs of his pants seem around the ankles and figured he's just playing dress-up in Hugh Jackman's clothes, hopefully sparing the cast and crew unnecessary lacerations by their excitable director.

Page Six has an eyewitness account of the recent blitzkrieg of downtown Manhattan by Luke "Fat Man" Wilson and Johnny "Little Boy" Knoxville, both fittingly bombed out of their gourds:

The Dead Frog blog tipped us off that the minds behind The Chappelle Theory site, which alleged that Oprah Winfrey (among others) was behind a plot to drive Dave Chappelle crazy and get his show off the air, have revealed themselves. As it turns out, the site was a viral marketing ploy for The Chappelle Theory Exposed, a short film by Chappelle's Show star Charlie Murphy and Neal Brennan, Chappelle's writing partner. We can't help feeling disappointed that the Theory wasn't first scrawled on a wall in crayon by a schizophrenic fan and then carefully transcribed onto a very nicely designed web page, but we can't say we're surprised. If nothing else, this little exercise in sneaky marketing gave us The Cosby Theory, which made all our dashed hopes for a genuine bit of crazy worth it.

Celebrity Clemency-Seeking Month continues with this report of Ethan Hawke sending an impassioned e-mail to acting Gov. Richard J. Codey of New Jersey to commute the sentence of a friend of his family who shot a police officer boyfriend to death in 1986, allegedly in self-defense:

For the second straight year, America's First Family of Celebrity Whoredom has saved Christmas by assembling in the same room (Please, baby Jesus, let it not be Photoshop!), gritting their teeth, and posing for their holiday card. While it's a relief that the spotlight is on the foregrounded Paris, we can't shake the depressing feeling that if the Hiltons truly loved and appreciated their attention-craving daughter's accomplishments, they'd erect an even crasser and more sexually suggestive shrine than the one in Rhode Island to celebrate her majesty.

Blogger Jezzka's Little Rants was one of the lucky few to attend a recent taping of that celebrated bacchanalia of butt-kissing, Inside the Actors Studio, when the guest of honor was none other than noted conspiracy theory topic, Dave Chappelle. After a three-hour delay with nothing to do but watch old episodes of The Chappelle Show and listen to Lipton's increasingly desperate improvised stalling tactics ("I know, everyone! How about a huge round of Bernard Pivot questionnaire as featured on Bouillon de culture!"), Chappelle finally shows up, and surprise! He's a mensch albeit a trembling, chain-smoking one: